1871.] Two Copper-plate Inscriptions from Bamanghati. 163 
understanding of the purport of the text could help any one to 
determine which is which. Indeed the difference is so very 
minute and almost evanescent, that in my first reading I had 
rendered a passage qT^; instead of 
qrq*, which latter reading alone makes any sense. • The compound 
is expressed at two places in two different ways; thus at some it 
is % and at others is j{. It is interesting to note that the Bengali 
compound s of rf and ^ is to be observed in these inscriptions 
as *fj. In one of the tablets, the latter one, the compound vf 
has been greatly modified, and the compound has approached 
the form of more than that of the Devanagari On the 
whole, from the forms of the letters occurring in the inscrip¬ 
tions, one is led to suppose that the inscriptions are more Bengali 
than anything else, and that they contain forms to which the Ben¬ 
gali alphabets may be traced. It was ere long a puzzle to many 
a palaeographist to explain how such Bengali forms of alphabets 
as *$T, of, and *f, originated; but these records help to solve the 
difficulty. 
The language is Sanskrit, and the metre of the s'lokas which 
now and then turn up, is anustupa, except the last couplets, which 
are in the long distich metre. The grammar on the whole 
is correct, but errors and omissions, committed by the engraver, are 
in the later plate specially, numerous and frequent. The style of 
the composition as well as the phrases are quite modern, and this 
fact alone ought to warn us against identifying the Samvat of 
S rf Banabhanja Deva’s inscription with that of Vikrainaditya. 
The inscriptions record the grant of several villages by two 
princes (father and son) of the same family. They open with 
the usual salutation, in which S'iva is invoked to bless the donors. 
The names of the ancestors of the donors follow with eulogies, 
and then come the names of the donors. The donee’s name and 
the names of the villages given away, and the rights thereto 
attached, and the privileges accruing therefrom, are next mention¬ 
ed. Imprecations are fulminated against the resumption by 
succeeding princes of the villages, and the records close with 
the usual quotations from the Dharma Sastras, in which the donors 
of lands are praised and those who resume lands given by others 
are condemned as vile sinners. 
